First of all, it irks me a little every time a talking head uses the phrase “health care reform”. As Americans, we have the best health care in human history, and almost all of it at even the smallest [...]

I’m what people like to euphemistically call a lapsed Catholic. That means that my parents made me go to a bunch of boring ceremonies, roughly once a week, as a kid, and that, as is the case for most people, they proved utterly irrelevant to my [...]

Lesbian and gay students kissing in front of protesters from Westboro Baptist Church at Oberlin College

Today I went out in the rain, carrying a sign that read “YOUR GOD IS A LITTLE GOD”, to counter-protest the Westboro “Baptist” Church, who apparently drove here from Kansas because a local high school is doing a play [...]

Forty years ago today, a Purdue alumnus (BTFU!) stepped off a ladder and into history. And yet last week the Obama administration had to hedge its bets regarding whether or not we’re going back – ever.

It’s easy to be pessimistic about designs so grand they almost elude comprehension. In an era of staggering [...]

There are three aspects to fighting any war: military (the need to punch lots of little holes in people and objects); political (the need to provide resources); and social (the need to convince people that the objectives are justified). The United States treats drug trafficking and consumption as a social problem, albeit with an occasional [...]

So I’m on a months-long waiting list for my evil black rifle. Apparently since November supplies of weapons and ammunition have been severely outpaced by demand. There are myriad factors at play, of course: global metal prices; military demand; corporate greed. But most of it is good old-fashioned suburban white fear. Once the scary black [...]

This morning, Kirk and Lynne officially became my first friends to (voluntarily) reproduce. In my “congratulations, don’t drop her” email I almost said something about them having 16 years before they had to worry about me hitting on their daughter, but in a rare fit of common sense I didn’t.

Here’s a fun look at what our (distant and attractive in a way that you know is wrong but feels so right) cousins think of our cable TV programming. Turns out, there are people who hate Fox News more than me.

It’s really enlightening to see how the rhetoric is viewed by someone with [...]

Yuri has said something to the effect that not writing is OK, because it means you’re busy doing, and i think there’s some truth to that. The problem, of course, is that then you run the risk of forgetting things. Travel summary first: we spent two night in Venice, then slept next to a freeway [...]

I’m cramming for an exam in the class I don’t attend, but I thought everyone would enjoy this. Actually, enjoy might not be the right word. http://ubergoth.net/sims/bushkerry/index.html It’s a lot like the real election, but with more making out.